


Janet's Rose Garden

by RobberBaroness



Category: Beauty and the Beast - All Media Types, Tam Lin (Traditional Ballad)
Genre: F/M, Fae & Fairies, Mash-up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-24 21:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3784828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/pseuds/RobberBaroness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Janet asked her father for a rose.  She got an entire garden...and the beast that dwelled within it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Janet's Rose Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LeaperSonata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeaperSonata/gifts).



> Thank you to my wonderful beta DesertVixen!

It was a chilly Autumn afternoon when Tam Lin spied Janet amid the wild roses. He could tell the time of year by the leaves and the phases of the moon, but the roses lived in their own world, explosions of crimson and violet and gold and ivory no matter the season or the weather. And yet to Tam Lin’s eyes, a strange maiden’s long brown braid and eyes so dark they were almost black stood out as far more beautiful than anything in the enchanted garden.

Though he had lost all appreciation for fairy finery years ago, the maiden was clearly delighted by what she saw. Her delicate hand moved from one flower to another, unable to decide on what she wanted, until it finally alighted upon a thorny branch with two blooms, both white tinted with the softest pink, composed of petals crisply folded like Japanese paper.

Some instinct still stirred him to move, after all his time in the garden.

“That does not belong to you,” he whispered to the maiden. Rather than stepping back from the rose bushes, however, she whirled about and seized Tam Lin by the wrist.

“So I’ve found you! You’re the fairy they say haunts this garden! Well, it’s mine now, so don’t think you can frighten me.” There was a gleam in her eyes; she’d clearly never seen a fairy before, much less spoken boldly to one, and she was enjoying the experience. “They say young ladies shouldn’t come here. They say you leap out at them and grab their skirts.”

Tam Lin was about to argue in his own defense, then decided he really couldn’t. There had been maidens who had come to the rose garden in years past; men sometimes, but maidens seemed most drawn to the wild flowers. And whenever he had seen a passerby, he had taken the chance to call for help, plaintively at first but wilder and more desperate with each passing year. When he thought about it, he could even remember grabbing at a skirt.

And in his horned, beastly state, he couldn’t very well argue that he wasn’t a fairy.

“It wasn’t my intention,” was all he could say.

“Then what is? Protecting this garden? My father owns this estate, and he said I could have the rose garden and all that lay within if I was prepared to care for it. He and my sisters thought I wouldn’t dare because of the wicked fairy, but I’m not afraid.”

“Nor was I, once upon a time.” The maiden looked at him curiously, but released his wrist. “Keep your rose garden” he told her. “And be thankful you will have no worse punishment than a gentle rebuke for defying a fairy.”

He faded back among the greenery, and try as she might, the maiden could not find him again all the rest of the day.

 

***

 

The maiden returned the next morning, looking far from deterred.

“Fairy? Beast-man? Are you still here?”

“I have a name,” he said as he appeared behind her. She pivoted around gracefully, though she almost hit him across the face with the end of her braid in doing so.

“What is it, then? I’m Janet.” She bit down on her lip. “I probably shouldn’t have told you my true name, should I? I don’t know much about fairies.”

“Nor do I, and I’ve lived among them.” He took her hand in his clawed one, and kissed it gently. “My name is Tam Lin. Use that knowledge as you will.”

“Tam Lin.” She repeated the name thoughtfully. “Why is it that I only found you when I went to pluck a rose? Why didn’t you leap out and frighten me as soon as I came in, like you did the others?”

“I thought the others could help me. Now I know I’ve missed my chance.” He looked down at the ground. “You called me a young man, remember? And yet I have seen the flowers fall and grow again so many times since I was first enchanted. If there was humanity left in me, I would have grown old by now.”

Janet glanced down at Tam Lin’s claws, and from the way she narrowed her eyes, he guessed she had seen what stained them.

“Deer come through the garden sometimes,” he told her. “I do not relish the taste of uncooked food, but I must eat. Had I known a gentlewoman would be scrutinizing me, I would have been more careful with my nails.”

Janet gazed at him with a look that spelled either fear or fascination.

“I was worried that it might be...but no, I believe you. Although perhaps I shouldn’t.”

“It’s always wise to bet against a fairy’s words,” he admitted. His own appearance had caused him heartbreak at first, then simple sorrow, but he had never considered that a woman might look upon it with interest. If he had not already admired her forthright nature, her curiosity would still have endeared her to him.

“My rose garden is terribly dangerous, it would seem. Not that I’d ever tell my father or sisters about you.” She paused. “Unless you want me to? Would more people who knew of you mean more chances of helping you?”

“I doubt it,” he said after considering it for a moment. “But you know your family best- if they are knowledgeable in the ways of enchantment, feel free to bring them here.”

“No, they’re not. But perhaps...I like reading fantasy stories, you see. Perhaps if I look amid my stories, I might find something to help you!” Janet turned back to the house. “I must go and look! I’ll be back tomorrow, don’t worry!”

He worried nevertheless.

(“I told you I’d return”, she said the next day. And so she did, nearly every day for a month, until a day without seeing Janet’s heart-shaped face came to pain Tam Lin like a day without sunshine. Her books of fantasy stories provided neither of them with answers, but Tam Lin enjoyed having her read them to him.)

 

***

 

“I like you,” Janet said one evening. “You’re startling at first, but I like the way you speak to me. And the way you look. And the way-” Janet blushed. “What I mean to say is, if you wanted to seduce me, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.”

“If I wanted to seduce you?” he asked, the hint of a laugh in his voice. “Do you think you know what a beast desires?”

“Well, no, but I thought I’d ask!” Janet’s cheeks were bright pink by now, and Tam Lin at last began to take her seriously. He wanted to ask if she knew what she risked in dallying with him, but the truth was that he did not know himself.

“Come closer, Janet. See what it is you say you want. See me for what I am.”

He allowed Janet to walk about him and take in what she saw: the face of a man, the hair of a lion, the claws of a bear, the cloven hooves and beginnings of horns like those of a ram.

“What do you see?”

“A creature unlike any other,” she responded.

“Some might say a monster.” Boldly and foolishly, Tam Lin reached out with his claws and pushed a stray lock of Janet’s hair from her face. To see her was to forget his longing for days gone by, days of humanity that would have given him a life and death long before he could have ever met such a woman. “Don’t you know what monsters do to beautiful girls?” he said, his voice soft and low. “Don’t you fear to leave yourself vulnerable in the arms of one?”

Janet’s large eyes never wavered from Tam Lin’s face.

“And what if I want a monster?”

“Then you would want him only half so much as he wanted you.”

She kissed him then, and he pulled her down among the red roses.

 

***

 

Janet was lazy in pulling her clothes back on; the night air did not seem to bother her. Tam Lin looked at her adoringly, but there was a hint of melancholy in his voice when he spoke up at last.

“I love you, Janet. Thank you for this night.”

“It was not done as a favor.” She smiled. “I think I’m going to enjoy having a fairy lover.” Janet said her words playfully, but Tam Lin did not respond to them in the spirit intended. Realizing that she had hurt him, Janet hastened to make things right.

“I’m sorry. I forgot-”

“You forgot I was not always a fairy. It’s easy to forget.”

“Were you stolen, with a changeling left in your place?”

It was a story he had repeated to himself on many nights, if only to tether himself to the world and remember that he had a past, that he had not always been a monster in a field of flowers. If Janet truly felt for him, keeping the story from her would serve no purpose.

“Not quite. I was heir to these grounds once, how long ago I do not know. An old woman begged shelter one cold Halloween night, offering me nothing but a blue rose in return. I sent her away- or should I say, I tried to. Before my eyes she grew young and fair, but somehow more grotesque than before. My refusal was scarcely spoken when she threw off her disguise, as if that refusal had been what she was waiting for all along. ‘If you will not act like a gentleman,’ she said, ‘then you shall not be one.’ What happened next is like a half-forgotten dream, but I remember her magic wrapping about me, cutting into my flesh like thorns, burrowing beneath my skin and changing me. I have lived like an animal in the rose garden ever since...and at this time every year, I feel myself changing more than before.”

He looked up at the yellow Autumn moon.

“Perhaps the change happens on Halloween, the anniversary of her curse. Soon there will be nothing left in me to change, and I shall at last be nothing but a fairy.”

“No!’’ Janet grasped his hand in hers. “It’s my rose garden, not hers, and she won’t take you if I say she can’t. Years of prison and torment for a moment of callousness- she has no claim on you, no matter the night!”

It was the frantic tone her voice took on that told Tam Lin what night it was.

“Goodbye, Janet. Let my last human memory be that of loving you.”

“No!” Janet cried again, and several things happened at once. The magic thorns that had ripped at his skin so many times before like Prometheus’ eagle came back, and Janet chose that same moment to wrap her arms about him as tightly as she could. As surely as it pierced him it tore into her, and yet she still would not let go.

He should have pushed her away for her own safety, but instead Tam Lin allowed the woman he loved to embrace him and the pain that had transformed him. The pain was sharp enough that he could isolate every change even as he struggled against it; he felt claws digging even farther out of the tips of his fingers, his horns pushing to grow and curl, even the tips of his teeth sharpen enough to draw blood. With Janet in his arms, he knew he could not do a thing that would harm her, and so he fought to push back the natural weapons being made of his body.

Whether it was due his effort or hers, something about the magic went wrong.

“Hold fast to me,” Janet whispered. “Hold fast, my love!”

Though he feared the magic would rip them both to pieces, Tam Lin clutched Janet tightly to him. Perhaps it was his imagination, but for an unendurably long time it felt as if the entire garden was closing in on the two lovers to cut them into ribbons with an army of thorns...and then it receded. There was no more pain, and no more magic.

Tam Lin looked down at his hands. The claws had not grown as they’d tried to before, but they were still there.

“I...I thought I would change back. I thought I’d be given back what I’d lost.”

Janet reached out a hand to stroke the tangled mane of his hair, gently skimming her fingers over his stubby horns.

“You are changed, my love. It is the first time I have ever known you to look at ease.”

However he looked, Tam Lin felt a sense of bliss in Janet’s arms he had never felt before, not even when making love. For the first time in an eternity, he could not feel any magic chaining him to the garden, or anything touch his skin except the breeze and Janet’s soft caress.

“You’ve fairly won me away, then, and a monster is your prize. Now you know what comes of tangling with the fairies.” Though his words were ominous, Tam Lin’s smile was genuine, and Janet nearly cried with relief as she kissed him.

“What will you say to your father,” he asked as soon as she allowed him a moment to breathe, “when you bring a beast home?”

“I will remind him that he gave me the rose garden and all that lay within, so long as I promised to care for it.”

Tam Lin took Janet’s outstretched hand, and she led him back to her home.


End file.
